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Using the Tuner
63
En
BASIC
An introduction to RDS (European model only)
Radio Data System, or RDS as it’s usually known, is a system used by FM radio stations to provide listeners with var-
ious kinds of information—the name of the station and the kind of show they’re broadcasting, for example. This
information shows up as text on the display, and you can switch between the kind of information shown. Although
you don’t get RDS information from all FM radio stations, you do with most.
Probably the best feature of RDS is that you can search automatically by type of program. So, if you felt like listening
to jazz, you could search for a station that’s broadcasting a show with the program type, JAZZ. There are around 30
such program types, including various genres of music, news, sport, talk shows, financial information, and so on.
The receiver lets you display three different kinds of RDS information: Radio Text, Program Service Name, and Pro-
gram Type.
Radio Text (RT) is messages sent by the radio station. These can be anything the broadcaster chooses—a talk radio
station might give out it telephone number as RT, for example.
Program Service Name (PS) is the name of the radio station.
Program Type (PTY) indicates the kind of program currently being broadcast.
The receiver can search for and display the following program types:
Using the RDS display
To display the different types of RDS information available,
press TUNER button on the remote control and use the
DISPMODE button to cycle through the types of RDS
information.
Each press changes the display as follows:
Memo:
• If any noise is picked up while displaying the RT scroll,
some characters may be displayed incorrectly.
• If you see NO RADIO TEXT DATA in the RT display, it
means no RT data is being transmitted from the broad-
cast station. If you have entered a name for the station,
it is displayed instead of RT data. If you haven’t, the
display will automatically switch to the PS data dis-
play. If no PS data is transmitted from the station, the
frequency will be displayed.
• In the PTY display, there are cases where NO DATA or
NO TYPE is shown. If this happens, the PS display is
shown after a few seconds.
• This unit converts lower case characters transmitted
by broadcast station to upper case characters.
NEWS News
AFFAIRS Current affairs
INFO General information
SPORT Sports
EDUCATE Educational material
DRAMA Radio drama
CULTURE Arts and culture
SCIENCE Science and technology
VARIED Usually talk-based material,
such as quiz shows
or interviews.
POP M Pop music
ROCK M Rock music
EASY M “Middle of the road” music
LIGHT M ‘Light’ classical music
CLASSICS ‘Serious’ classical music
OTHER M Other music not fitting any of
the above categories
WEATHER Weather reports
FINANCE Finance and business
CHILDREN Children’s entertainment
SOCIAL Social affairs
RELIGION Religious programming
PHONE IN Phone-in talk shows
TRAVEL Travel
LEISURE Leisure interests and hobbies
JAZZ Jazz music
COUNTRY Country music
NATION M Popular music in a language
other than English
OLDIES Popular music from the ’50s
FOLK M Folk music
DOCUMENT Documentaries
In addition, there is a program type called
ALARM, used for exceptional emergency
announcements. You can’t search for this, but
the tuner will switch automatically to this RDS
broadcast signal.
VSX-AX5i.book Page 63 Friday, May 23, 2003 6:33 PM